Category: Education

While some movies and books capture a child’s attention, there’s a new way to keep children engaged while expanding their learning experience. This tool is called podcasting. Podcasting is the making of digital broadcasting that is available to download and listen to. This form of technology is making a beneficial impact in classrooms. The Podcasting Host says: “Podcasting offers the opportunity for lecturers to easily broadcast engaging audio content, which students can then listen to at any time and wherever they are.” With many students having extra activities outside of school, it’s tough to make time to sit down, and read a book. Podcasting offers a new way for students to be available to content. This tool also serves as a bonus for missed lectures and class time. Students can stay up to date on lectures and class discussions while being away from the classroom itself. Students who struggle with a disability, or ELL, can better enhance auditory skills, which support reading and writing. “Many students may struggle with reading through mental impairments, such as Dyslexia, and podcasts can be a big aid in this. Podcasts are equally useful in cases where a visual impairment makes traditional learning methods arduous”, adds The Podcast Host.

With podcasts having so many benefits in the classroom, here is a short video on why to incorporate them in the classroom.

“In an Atlantic piece about “the podcast brain,” the writer Tiffanie Wen quoted Emma Rodero, a communications professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, as saying that “listening, unlike looking at a written page, is more active, since the brain has to process the information at the pace it is played.’ My student Roberto offered similar insight: ‘I think it helps me out with my reading since I have to keep a pace up.’” –The Atlantic.

For students with auditory disorders or hearing impairment, this may not be the best solution to enhance learning growth. With proper use and management, it could possibly strengthen or practice auditory skills. Students who struggle with speech and listening skills may also benefit from podcasts. Practice speech therapy with using student interest as a leverage. Recording therapy sessions using podcasts can help show students areas needed to be worked on or practiced. The Speech Knob has some awesome experience with using podcasts in her therapy sessions. Class Tech Tips also supports tips on how to improve listening skills in students while using podcasts.

Okay, let’s be honest. How many times did you find yourself zoning out in the classroom thinking about weekend plans or how to avoid the famous “head bobbing”, trying not to doze off to sleep while your teacher talked about pond water molecules? If you didn’t mentally raise your hand, nobody likes a liar.

Stanford Graduate School of Education – Stanford University

Stand Up Kids provides a very realistic study of standing vs. sitting. “The average U.S. student is sitting at school an average of 4.5 hours a day”, not including sitting at breakfast, lunch, dinner, the bus, in front of the TV, and even sitting more at home doing homework! To me, learning is engaging cognitive abilities to their full potential, while exploring personal growth and experience.

Project-Based Learning is a simple solution to get students’ creativity pumping, and increasing the opportunity for interaction, the ability to work with others, and exploration of resources. Edutopia suggests that PBL involves:

Students learning knowledge to tackle realistic problemsas they would be solved in the real world

Students are typically solving highly complex problems leading them to become managers of their own learning process, with the guidance of a teacher. With PBL, it lets educators have multiple opportunities for assessment. Students who demonstrate and apply content knowledge are essentially exhibiting a check point for understanding. PBL allows a student’s ability to apply desired skills such as exploring their strengths or enhancing them. ­­­Having said that, it enables a teacher to learn more about each student, and classroom management. Individual, group, or partner-based projects can also help a teacher understand the atmosphere of classroom management with PBL.

With such a broad style of teaching, it gives teachers a lot of room to work with in incorporating PBL in a classroom. Giving students the ability to use their personal learning process opens the door for many advantages:

Students who partake in project based learning for classrooms often develop a greater ability to organize and research.

Students are evaluated based on their projects and presentations, rather than tests and exams.

Students can develop their communication skills and effectively listen and pass information along to the group they work so closely with – a skill that is essential as an adult in the real world.

Students are encouraged to facilitate a constructive investigation of a problem in which they are fully engaged in the learning project.

Rubrics can allow teachers to evaluate the students based on the curriculum/common core.

Develop transferrable skills

students are encouraged to become not just passive learners and note-takers, but rather critical thinkers who are highly capable of solving real-life problems that they are likely to encounter as they grow and mature into adulthood.

With advantages and disadvantages listed above, it’s very clear to have a healthy balance of PBL in a classroom. Test-taking skills are important for standardized tests and for future education, so it is needed that students regularly practice test-taking procedures. Furthermore, with so many strong advantages for PBL, it is also equally important to incorporate this style of teaching/learning as it is test-taking, to encourage creativity and student interaction!

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This is a text widget. The Text Widget allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. You can use a text widget to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Edit them in the Widget section of the Customizer.